Abstract
This study investigated the correlation between the construct of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA) and reading comprehension skill among Iranian distance EFL learners with age and gender serving as moderator variables. The research was carried out with a group of 112 male and female junior and senior students studying English at Mashhad Payame Noor University. A 33-item Likert-style Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale, a 28-item reading comprehension test, and a demographic questionnaire were completed by the participants. The Pearson product moment correlation, t-Test, and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that there was a significant negative relationship between FLRA and reading comprehension; moreover, no such relationship was found between foreign language reading anxiety and age; and finally compared to males, females suffered more from anxiety.
Highlights
Introduction and Literature ReviewAnxiety is a part of human emotion which includes fear and uncertainty, uneasiness and frustration or tension (Brown, 2000; Sarason, 1988; Scovel, 1978; Spielberger, 1972). Vasa and Pine (2004) believe that the three basic interrelated aspects of anxiety are physiological, behavioral, and cognitive, but it is the cognitive aspect which has received the most attention in recent studies
This study investigated the correlation between the construct of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA) and reading comprehension skill among Iranian distance EFL learners with age and gender serving as moderator variables
The results indicated that there was a significant negative relationship between FLRA and reading comprehension; no such relationship was found between foreign language reading anxiety and age; and compared to males, females suffered more from anxiety
Summary
Introduction and Literature ReviewAnxiety is a part of human emotion which includes fear and uncertainty, uneasiness and frustration or tension (Brown, 2000; Sarason, 1988; Scovel, 1978; Spielberger, 1972). Vasa and Pine (2004) believe that the three basic interrelated aspects of anxiety are physiological, behavioral, and cognitive, but it is the cognitive aspect which has received the most attention in recent studies. Facilitative anxiety stimulates the student to ‘fight’ the new learning task (Scovel, 1991), and debilitative anxiety, on the other hand, motivates the student to adopt avoidance behavior (Eysenck, 1979; Scovel, 1991). Different types of anxiety are associated with different situations. They can be classified as Trait, State and Situation Anxiety. Trait anxiety is believed to “impair cognitive functioning to disrupt memory, to lead to avoidance behaviors, and to have several other effects” (Eysenck, 1979; in MacIntye & Gardner, 1991c, p.87). According to (MacIntye & Gardner, 1991a) the most suitable measures for foreign language anxiety would be the situation-specific measures
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